Strengthening the Ecosystem for Health Policy and Systems Research for Health Systems Strengthening in Asia : Health Systems Strengthening Accelerator

Strengthening the Ecosystem for Health Policy and Systems Research for Health Systems Strengthening in Asia

A Health Systems Strengthening Accelerator (Accelerator) Landscaping Analysis of 97 health policy and research institutions (HPSRIs) across 27 countries in the Asia region found a need for evidence translation capacity development. The analysis revealed that nearly all HPSRIs are engaged in evidence generation but significantly fewer are involved in translating evidence into policy and practice. Only 47% of the HPRSIs were engaged in managing adoption of solutions they proposed and far fewer (6%) were engaged in implementing the change.

While learning platforms and other resources exist to address this need, fragmentation in both content and approach, a lack of follow up support, and weak linkages between researchers and decisionmakers have hindered capacity-development efforts. The COVID-19 pandemic has also introduced new challenges and underscored the need for virtual capacity-strengthening.

The Accelerator is launching a series of virtual convenings to improve collaboration between HPSRIs and learning platforms to exchange knowledge around generating and translating health systems strengthening evidence into action. The series will engage a range of global, regional, and country actors to co-create a shared vision and action plan to design and advance evidence-informed policies. The objectives of this series are:

To identify key challenges that Asian HPSRIs face during the knowledge-to-action cycle.
To understand if and how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected HPSRIs and identify concrete ways learning platforms can support these needs.
To facilitate creation of a shared vision for how learning platforms operational in Asia can respond to needs articulated by HPSRIs and other country-level actors.

This series, which will take place between May 27 through June 29, will serve to strengthen connections between HPSRIs, learning platforms, and other stakeholders to address both immediate and critical health system challenges and ensure that health systems continue to make progress toward achieving universal health coverage.

More information on this convening and co-creation series can be found on the series microsite here.